Parts of Batticaloa worse than Vanni in ‘normalcy’

The location of newly established checkpoints of the Sri Lanka Army at Allai-oadai and Maavaddavaan junction [Photo: TamilNet]

[TamilNet, Thursday, 03 May 2012, 16:30 GMT]
While the West and India have stopped talking about the East, and try to project an image that ‘normalcy’ has returned to the East and the North also should follow suit in the same directions, large parts of Batticaloa are silently kept under conditions worse than that of Vanni for the last five years, news sources in the East said. Similar to the times of the war in Vanni, more than 250,000 people were systematically displaced by the occupying SL military in 2007, in Batticaloa’s Paduvaan-karai part alone, under the pretext of ‘liberating’ them from the LTTE. Even though it is said that they are ‘rehabilitated phase by phase’, they are deliberately kept without basic facilities for nearly five years now, while the only ‘development’ seen there is the escalation of militarisation and harassment by the occupying Sinhala military.
SL military’s invasion and artillery shells displaced the entire population of Paduvaan-karai part of Batticaloa district in 2007. The region includes administrative divisions such as Vellaave’li, Vavu’natheevu, Paddippazhai, Koa’ra’laip-pattu South, Ea’raavoorp-pattu and Chengkalladi. Full story >>